COL. SIR JOHN PLUNKETT MURRAY, BA, Barrister at Law of the Inner

405 THE LIFE AND WORK OF LIEUT.-COL. SIR JOHN PLUNKETT MURRAY, B.A., Barrister at Law of the Inner Temple, London, Bar rister of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Lieut.-Govemor of Papua. (Read before the meeting of the Historical Society of Queensland on June 26th, 1947, by Dr. T. P. Fry, M.A., D.Jur.Sc, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Queensland, Senior Officer of Legal Research of the Department of External Territories.) John Hubert Plunkett Murray: His Life Begins at Forty-two On 16th September 1904, Lieutenant-Colonel John Hubert Plunkett Murray, B.A. (Oxon)., Barrister-at- Law of the Inner Temple, London, and Barrister of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, was appointed Chief Judicial Officer and Chief Magistrate of British New Guinea. It was an event which aroused practicaUy no public interest in Australia at the time. Colonel Murray him self probably thought of his appointment as the caping stone of his former legal career, rather than the foun dation stone of a new kind of career which would bring him fame as a ruler of subject races, and would reflect glory upon Australia instead of the ignominy which Australians had previously earned by their earlier treatment of the Australian aborigines. The new Chief Judicial Officer had experienced only moderate success as a barrister in New South Wales, and may well have considered himself fortunate that at the age of forty-two years he had achieved a steady annual income of £1,000, free of tax, which in 1904 was a very substantial income indeed. He could not reason ably have envisaged, and probably did not dare even to hope, that his judicial appointment was to be merely a step on the upward assent to the office of Lieutenant- Governor. The distinguished Sir Francis Winter, who had been the first Chief Judicial Officer to be appointed, had not succeeded Sir William Macgregor as Lieu tenant-Governor on the latter's retirement. Mr. Robin son, Sir Francis Winter's successor, had indeed been appointed to succeed Sir George Le Hunte when the latter became Governor of South Australia instead of Lieutenant-Governor of British New Guinea, but Robinson's suicide in a fit of despair induced by the 406 obloquy directed at him because of the Goibarri "mass acre," must have thrown into disrepute the idea that a good Chief Judicial Officer could be converted into an equally good Administrator or Lieutenant-Governor. And, whether this was so or not, an Acting Adminis trator, Captain F. R. Barton, was already in office at the date of Colonel Murray's appointment. Nevertheless, the new Chief Judicial Officer was at least as well equipped by heredity, training and inclina tion to play the role of a ruler of men, as he was to sit in judgment over them. In 1843 his father. Sir Terence Aubrey Murray, had been influential in New South Wales public life in the middle of the century. At the age of thirty-three years he had been elected a member of the Legislative Coun cil of New South Wales, and had become a leader of the local opposition to the Governor in their unwearying and vitriolic demand for self-government. In 1856 he became Minister for Lands and Works when self- government was granted to New South Wales. Al though his career as a Minister came to an end in 1858, but from that time until his death in 1873 he was suc cessively Chairman of Committees and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, and President of the Legislative Council, having held the latter office from 1862 to 1873. Daniel Deniehy, that master of incisive prose, who was a parliamentary colleague of Sir Terence Aubrey Mur ray in the earliest days of self-government, wrote of him that he had been "one of the most fearless, active and determined leaders of the Opposition. In Mr. Mur ray they had one of the most highly-cultured, the purest, the most eminent of men in character, in social position and property in New South Wales . the highest type of an Australian gentleman, whom even his worst enemies recognised as a standard authority in practical rural affairs." (He. was a pastoralist with a large property at Lake George, and for a brief period previously he had jointly owned Yarralumla, at present the official Canberra residence of Australia's Governor- Generals). On no other New South Wales politician, except the historic Sir John Robertson did Deniehy lavish such unstinted praise as he did on Murray. That Sir Terence Aubrey Murray had the qualities which Deniehy attributed to him may reasonably be in ferred from his own career and those of his children and grandchildren. Sir Terence was twice married. His first wife, who was a daughter of Colonel Gibbes, 407 bore him two daughters and a son. This son, James Aubrey Murray, who became an officer of the Lands Department in New South Wales was the father of Leonard Murray, who was to give a life-time of service to Papua, first as secretary to his great step-uncle, Sir John Hubert Plunkett Murray, and from 1941 to 1942 as Administrator of Papua as the l-^tter's successor. Sir Terence's second wife was an Englishwoman, a Miss Edwards, a cousin of Sir William S. GUbert, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, after whom was named their second son, Professor Sir George Gilbert Murray of Oxford University, the illustrious Greek scholar and a world authority on international affairs. The elder son of this second marriage was John Hubert Plunkett Mur ray, who was to become famous as Lieutenant- Governor of Papua and, like his younger brother, George Gilbert, was to be honoured by a knighthood. Like his father before him, the elder son, was twice married. In 1889, about three years after his retum to Sydney from Oxford University, with scholastic and athletic honours gracing his brows, the aristocratic John Hubert Plunkett Murray wooed and won the gentle but resourceful Sybil Maud Jenkins, a daughter of Dr. R. L. Jenkins of Neapean Towers at Douglas Park, one of the most beautiful old homesteads of New South Wales, which had been buUt by Sir Thomas Mitchell in the early dawn of settlement. On 14th May, 1929, Sir Hubert Murray's first wife died. In 1930 at the age of sixty-eight (?) years, and as the result of a shipboard romance, he married a much younger woman, an Irish widow, a Mrs. Vernon from Tipperary, who had become well-known in Sydney society. She had formerly been a Miss Trench, and was related to the Archbishop of that name. Unfor tunately Sir Hubert's second wife found life in Papua uncongenial, and she very soon left Papua, returning there only once and for another very brief stay, after which Sir Herbert agreed to a formal separation. From the time of his second marriage until his death it was his daughter, Mrs. Mary Pinney, who occupied in Sir Hubert's life the place of her mother. It was natural that George Gilbert and John Hubert, heirs to the culture and aristocratic tradition of the Murrays, and to the culture of the Gilberts, should aspire to achieve academic distinction and to become leaders and rulers of men. Even at the Sydney Grammar School the young 408 John Hubert Plunkett Murray was noted for his scholarship, his athletic prowess at boxing and other sports, and his powers of leadership. The impression he made on his fellow schoolboys there was recorded many decades later by "Banjo" Paterson, noted Aus tralian poet, who was also at the Sydney Grammar School, but in a lower form, when Murray was dux of the school. "When I was in IIIB at Sydney 'Grammar,' a very tall, lean chap was pointed out to me standing on the old College Street steps. That, I was told in awe-struck tones, was Murray, the dux of the school, who had passed the Senior in I don't know how many subjects. So far I replied in terms of blasphemous unconcern . But my pal added that he was the crack boxer of the school, and could lift Weigall's heavy armchair in the sixth room with one hand, and hold it out at arm's length. The reverence of that moment has never quite left me, and in the fifty years nearly that have intervened Murray has never done anything that ought to dis turb it." From Sydney Grammar School he went in 1878 to an English public school and spent a year or two in Germany, before going up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1881 as holder of a scholarship in classics. At that venerable and beautiful college, he received a training which developed his skills and enabled him to prove in even the best company he was outstanding as a scholar and athlete. In 1884 he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts, with first class final honours in Literae Humiores, which covers a broad field of classical literature and culture, and which many Oxonians consider to be one of the best scholastic bases for a career in public life. Two years later, in 1886, he also secured first class honours in Jurisprudence, and passed his examinations for admission as a barrister. As a boxer, swordsman and oarsman, he also achieved distinction at Oxford. He even rose to great heights as the heavyweight Amateur Boxing Champion of England. This long-legged, long- armed Australian won the championship final with a terrible punch in the second round.

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